catalyst 64-bit counters

Stickies from: cisco – SNMP Counters

Q. When should 64-bit counters be used?

A. RFC 2233 leavingcisco.com adopted expanded 64-bit counters for high capacity interfaces in which 32-bit counters do not provide enough capacity and wrap too fast.

As the speed of network media increases, the minimum time in which a 32-bit counter wraps decreases. For example, a 10 Mbps stream of back-to-back, full-size packets causes ifInOctets to wrap in just over 57 minutes. At 100 Mbps, the minimum wrap time is 5.7 minutes, and at 1 Gbps, the minimum is 34 seconds.

Note: The SNMP counters wrap, the command line interface (CLI) counters do not.

For interfaces that operate at 20,000,000 (20 million) bits per second or less, you must use 32-bit byte and packet counters. For interfaces that operate faster than 20 million bits per second, and slower than 650,000,000 bits per second, you must use 32-bit packet counters and 64-bit octet counters. For interfaces that operate at 650,000,000 bits/second or faster, 64-bit packet and octet counters must be used.

Correspondingly, Cisco IOS® Software does not support 64-bit counters for interface speeds of less than 20 Mbps. This means that 64-bit counters are not supported on 10 Mb Ethernet ports, only 100 Mb Fast-Ethernet and other high speed ports support 64-bit counters.